1. Field
This disclosure relates generally to asset tracking, and, more specifically, to monitoring asset movement and generation of notifications if an asset is moved from a particular site.
2. Background
Tracking the location and movement of assets can be a valuable undertaking for many companies. Assets of the company, in and of themselves, are often quite valuable and monitoring the location of such assets can be important to prevent theft or unauthorized use of the asset. For example, heavy construction equipment is commonly very valuable, with a single piece of equipment commonly worth in excess of one hundred thousand dollars. Furthermore, such equipment is frequently moved to new locations and used in construction activities. Such equipment is either owned by a particular construction company or leased from a leasing company. In either case, the owner of the equipment generally desires to have knowledge of the location of such equipment, and also to be notified if the equipment is moved away from a location.
The equipment owner may desire to have such knowledge to both ensure that the productivity of the equipment is maintained, and to be able to locate the asset in the case of an unauthorized use of the asset or theft of the asset. For example, if the equipment owner has leased the equipment to be used at a certain site, movement of the equipment away from that site may indicate that a thief is attempting to steal the equipment. Having the location of the equipment may thus help recover any stolen equipment, or stop a theft that is in progress. This ability helps to maintain the value of the company's asset portfolio and in many cases significantly reduces the cost of insurance for the company. Numerous other examples exist where it may be desired to track the location of assets.
In order to accomplish such asset tracking, assets are commonly equipped with a tracking unit that has a location sensor, such as a global positioning satellite (GPS) receiver, and is able to send location information of the asset to a central location. In this manner, an interested party may remotely monitor the location of the particular asset. Furthermore, some asset tracking systems may have a boundary established and generate an exception report in the event that the asset moves beyond such a boundary. Such a boundary is commonly referred to as a “geofence.” When the asset moves beyond the geofence boundary, a notification is generated that may be acted upon to determine why the geofence boundary was crossed. Using the construction equipment example, a geofence boundary may be established that corresponds to a perimeter of the construction site. If a piece of equipment that is located at the particular construction site crosses the geofence boundary, a notification is generated to alert an appropriate person that the piece of equipment is no longer on the construction site.
As will be recognized, the setting of geofences, and monitoring of assets associated with the geofences can become a resource intensive task. For example, if an equipment leasing company has a large number of equipment assets that may all be leased at any given time and located at any of a number of different sites, establishing such geofences and monitoring the equipment locations can require significant resources.